Kredit

I don't mind paying for the PO, however I'm missing an option in this poll: "Yes, provided the keep improving the game enough". The game's been out for what, 19 days now? They've had one real issue so far (trade) which was solved in an ok fashion. I'd expect the first "release" around the 1 month mark, which could now be blueprints and some small fixes/changes. Then MT after that? So far I have no reason to think that MC will "fail" at providing enough updates, but they haven't proven anything either. So I'll have to wait and see. One thing that I could see potentially causing me to cancel my PO is the 5 city limit... I've got 5 cities on Caliban now... I don't want to desert them (because I always grow strangely attached to my digital creations...), but I do want to start some new cities on Prospero (because I want to use what I've learned so far to build better, more efficient and more compatible cities there), which I can't now... I don't see any reason why they wouldn't allow us 5 cities per planet, instead of in total.

See what's making them unhappy (by clicking on the corresponding icon in the top-right of your screen), and fix it (start with red warnings, then orange)

Originally posted by: shawnfog All the more reason they should never have bothered with turning this game into an MMO, if you can even call it that. A city builder has not place being an online game. quote> And what's with these women, wanting to wear trousers, and work...?!?! Ridiculous!

Great idea I'd also like to have the option to put any number of tokens up with a "per unit" price, so that people can buy the number they want (some sort of bulkdiscount could also apply). Add an automatic trade-sharing between your own cities and I'm happy.

Tip: If the "disaster" struck after the last save, yank out your internet cable it won't save then... exit game, reconnect cable, re-enter game, city should be back to last save OT: Although I agree there's a few ways you can really screw yourself over, sometimes without noticing, I do like the idea that bad decisions can have really bad consequences Yes, it can potentially cost you a lot, but it also means that what you do, matters. You can't just re-load when you've screwed things up .

Originally posted by: ifurkend Adding a pause button in PO can only be beneficial. You can pause the game and set up a new contract w/o leaving the game or watching your city goes into bankruptcy while looking for a new contractor. The game will auto-pause when no input is made for a certain span. So the "ever-consistency" doesn't exist in the Planet. Cities are consistently progressing only when the player is active. Still CXL is not a traditional MMOgame but a revolutionary MMOCBG. Players should be allowed to sightsee their own city at any given time regardless of the critical state of the city. Otherwise it would not qualify as a City Building Game.quote> I agree on the last part, though that could easily be realised by adding a "view" option to the city, where you view it as another player would..

Well I'm not the most experienced player, but with all of my cities I can usually just sit and watch it generate money.... of course, cancelled trades need to be dealt with, but 1 token more or less usually doesn't make the difference. I'm not opposed to a pause button (which allows you to keep building), however, it would change the game. As you point out, you "don't have the time" to walk around, fix problems, etc. Add a pause button, and you do have the time. Which means the game's changed. (Most notably, it's become more easy) Once again, I'm not against the idea, but for what you want to do, you shouldn't need it... ironically, I suspect your problem might actually be that you're building to fast (if you start with high density zones to quickly it will be very hard to balance everything). Basically, if you get unemployement to around 3-4% for all groups (with 100% home filling), satisfaction no lower than 50-60% and no resources in the red, you should be able to watch your city run it's course, without anything changing. However, if one or more of the resources is in the red, one or more of the pop groups is unhappy (<50%) or there's not enough people for the industry (in other words, if your city is not balanced), this will cause effects throughout the city, which can cause other effects, and so on and so forth... before you know it, you're in a downwards spiral.

well I play on "very low" settings (yesyes, my gfx card is 4+ years old ), and I never see anyone anywhere... ever... ISSAGHOSTTOWN!!!! I think it'll be quite a shock when I replace my gfx card next month and all of a sudden there's people everywhere... AIIIIEEEEEEEEEEE!

Originally posted by: Livin in Sim Originally posted by: Kredit Dear Mod, Thanks for "merging" my thread into this one... however, I intentionally started a seperate thread, because the subject is different... there's a massive difference between "constructive criticism" (ie. telling people they suck in a nice way) and "suggestions" (ie. having an original idea that you would like to see implemented). The list in this thread is a compilation of bugreports, complaints, suggestions and rants, whereas I wished to compile a list with exclusively "suggestions". So either something new to be added, or a new way to handle something existing... Now of course it's at your discretion whether or not you agree and put my thread back, but I'd be much obliged quote> I had just PMed you, and listed out some of my reasoning for merging it. I think both the threads were started with same intention, and there is potential for going astray in any thread. I'm hoping we're heading in a more positive direction lately, and the perk about this thread is that MC has visited it, so it's on their radar. This thread has stayed on Page 1 for quite some time as well, so was hoping your input might not become buried, as it is a great post. But, after further thought on my part, if you really have doubts about your objective being met in this thread, you have my permission to copy your post (just edit it, select everything, ctrl-c) and start another new topic, then delete your post here. This would be the easiest fix. I can tidy up the rest in this thread. Thanks for your understanding, and enjoy the forums. --Liv quote> Ah yes sorry, missed the pm and no problem, I see what you mean and I think it's a good idea actually... maybe the OP of this thread could sort the list on bugs/suggestions/rants/other?

Dear Mod, Thanks for "merging" my thread into this one... however, I intentionally started a seperate thread, because the subject is different... there's a massive difference between "constructive criticism" (ie. telling people they suck in a nice way) and "suggestions" (ie. having an original idea that you would like to see implemented). The list in this thread is a compilation of bugreports, complaints, suggestions and rants, whereas I wished to compile a list with exclusively "suggestions". So either something new to be added, or a new way to handle something existing... Now of course it's at your discretion whether or not you agree and put my thread back, but I'd be much obliged

Hey all, I thought I'd start a thread for suggestions I know there's a few threads "suggesting" things already... but I've got a specific idea for this one! What I'd like to see is a collection of suggestions that only ADD to the gameplay. So no "remove wealth-zoning" or "remove trading" or "PO SUCKS!" Also, it's a thread for suggesting NEW things, not complaining about already existing things. So it's fine to say "Leisure should be part of commerce, except for things like musea, they should be city services", but not "leisure is teh stoopid, remoof plx!" In short: positive suggestions, not negative commentary! I'll start of with a few of mine. I'll also try to add any new suggestions as they get posted. Here goes: 1. Inter-city trade interface An interface that allows you to view resource stats for all your cities on one planet at once, and reassign them without buying/selling (so if City A has 2 excess office tokens, and City B needs one, you can just "give" it to City B, bypassing the trade system) Allows you to maximise between your cities. Prevents "personal trades" to influence the statistics on the Market (buy offers for .5 c and such) 2. "Guilds" Allow cities to form or join a "guild", which has accces to a private chat channel, a private Guild Market Place. Many more options can be considered: Guild trades (guild members buy/sell to the guild, the guild buys/sells to the outside market), Guild taxes/funds/loans, special buildings only available to guild-members of a guild over a certain size, a special "guild management city" (guild leader can place city services and utilities, members can place housing and businesses or something), etc. etc. Increases online functionality and interaction (both gameplay and social) 3. More Upgrade functions Upgrade structure: -Low density to Med density and vice versa. -Change to a specific building (after the building has been built) Upgrade road: -Upgrade to a bigger road (either expanding to free space or demolishing if no space available) 4. Upgrades to the current trade system: -Sort current trades by type/resource -Post "combined individual" sales. (I post 5 office tokens for 100c, so 20c per token. A buyer can choose to buy 1-5 depending on his/her needs.) -Include more information in trade message ("a contract was suspended due to insufficient tokens" … great…. Which city, which resource, was I out of tokens or the other person… So: "Trade cancelled: City X, 20c <-> City B, 1 office token. Reason: Insufficient tokens (city B)" for instance… 5. Parks Allow free-zone park placing, remove size-limit on fill-in park tool. Apply the enviroment bonus for all types of park, or grant different bonuses for the other types. Increase variety in cities. Special bonuses for certain parks could be used to "fix" problems in cities. 6. "Fill in" options for empty areas left by zoning tool These empty areas are now filled by something that looks like wooded park area, but doesn't do anything. So you have to destroy it and then place park…. Add an option to choose what to fill this with: Either nothing, or one of the parks from decorations. Would save a lot of time and useless bulldozing. 7. Auto terraforming Basically, when trying to place a structure that can't be placed because of "ground error", instead of not allowing it to be placed, add an option "adjust ground", which would terraform the ground so that the structure can be placed. Update 1: 8. Roads: could we have exit/merging lanes? Would make some road junctions cooler (Androv)

Well, in theory you should be able to balance out resources between 5 cities so that you don't need to buy or sell to anyone else... but I don't think it's easy It's not as straightforward as "my city is short on oil and holidays, so I'll build another to provide those!" because then, that city needs resources as well.... so you build another city... which needs other resources... etc. etc. In the end you could end up with a very profitable set of cities, but it might actually be easier to just focus on one city and buy/sell on the market...

I thought his tourism bonus of -6% was even more impressive But based on that screen: You have way to many unemployed unqualifieds, so destroy some of their homes or create jobs for them. You have a large shortage of holidays, buy some on the market or (if you have suitable terrain) build some holiday hotels. Your enviroment is screwed, try to move polluting industry (HI, MF, Oil, Elec, Waste) away from your citizens or removing it completely, also put as many "wooded park area" in between houses as you can. Your services satisfaction is low, check the different services satisfaction with the menu on the right of your screen, figure out which are too low and place more of them.

In general it would be nice for message to be accurate though i.e., if you are situated on a blocked road because of traffic issues, which means you can't reach the interstate you need to get on, and you are asked "how is your business doing?", you wouldn't say "oh fine there's an interstate around the corner! (ignore me going bankrupt here, I'm fine... really!)", but rather "Terrible! There's traffic jams here all the time!"

or, you click on the farm road and select "small road" in the upgrade menu

5 cities per planet and yes, you can trade with yourself (by putting up a buy/sell order with one city and then accepting it with the other). It seems intended and I doubt it will change, luckily!

I actually get the message "the citizens are having fun in the city!" regularly in my new city (Aspyr). Aspyr is an office/high tech/holiday town, this means hardly any unqualified workers and no air polution. Leisure-wise, I've placed quite a lot of leisure around town, paying attention to the type (I think I'm safe in saying that the "quality" of entertainment relates to the type of citizen, i.e. "low" = unqualified, "med" = qualified, etc. All other services are well represented as well, basically all citizens are satisfied about everything. Strange thing is, even in this situation I still every now and again get the "more leisure needed" message, though no longer "the city is dead and boring" or "the citizens are bored". (checking leisure satisfaction still shows all houses as green though) So it's possible (for a small town at least), though it can be expensive and it's not certain what it's worth.

Originally posted by: mrdazza_460 And yes, hotels are all over the city... as they are in my CXL cities as well. Putting them all in one place would make them fail horribly. What you won't see in either my CXL cities or real cities, is a hotel in an area that's meant for housing. I can't buy a plot of land which is assigned as residential and start a business there... Or even buy an existing office building and just live in it.... It's meant to be a business. That is not true you can, as long as you go though the proper channels there is nothing stoping you, this happens on a regular bases, especially when land is becoming harder to find in inner-city, developers love to make multipurpose buildings to maximize there profits, large shopping centres and other large retail companies are constantly trying to buy up the land/ houses if there is a profit to be made I can bet my money a pesky zoning law wont stop it, developers are like Piranhas , ounces you let one in the all come and before you no it you are living on the gold cost, and nobody wont to live there(well not me anyway) Maybe our are right maybe I am just nit-piking, and ultimately I will just have to put up with it and I do understand that is good for game play, Well when it comes to upgrading roads, I do find it unrealistic to demolish whole streets, but that is a design problem with the game that you have to do that, so that really cant be changed, although a quick fix you we to have 2 sets of every street one with normal sidewalks and the other with large to cater to upgrading Well I better get back on topic or the power to be will closes the thread. the game is not that hard to play in general, though the game is very reactive, one minute you are going grate guns and the next your ruing a huge loss and you haven’t done anything. quote> The zoning laws you mention are exactly why you can't just build/start a hotel anywhere. Of course, you can try to get the city to change the laws, which is what developers do all the time. In-game, if your offices complain about lack of hotels, but there's no area you've assigned to hotels, developers can't build them. So they whine to you (through the game's messages), and you cave in and allow them to build a hotel close to the offices. Upgrading roads by first destroying them is actually quite realistic (it's what they do in the real world in most cases, unless they're just adding a lane or two...), but I think it would be good to have an "upgrade" option that adds lanes or destroys the piece of road and then replaces it. Mostly for gameplay reasons though And on that, I completely agree! It's not a difficult game to play, but playing well can be a real challenge

Hmm... I'm not completely sure that "none" is correct... I can't imagine a city of that size with no contracts... the industry needed to support it would cause so much polution nothing else would work

wow, interesting! I indeed assumed it would only be effective on the actual area of water it covered, so that a tower on just a little spot of water would hardly gather any water at all... but basically it's just an amount of water per tower, and place as many as you can... I gotta do some water-tower-replacement tonight

Originally posted by: Psycho_Teddy Originally posted by: Kredit Quick question about trading through the website: What's the point? .</emoticons/2.gif" border="0' alt='2.gif" border="0'> *runs of to trade on the website a bit* quote> I find the website handy because I can work on optimization when I'm at work. For example, I've got a surplus of oil that I need to get rid of because one of my high profile contracts fell through while I was away from the game. No problem, I won't lose a dime while I'm away because all I have to do is sign in on the website and re-submit the contract for hire. It's a nice way to keep things in check so you don't come back to any surprises. VERY VERY good design feature on MC's part. I really enjoy this. quote> yeah, as I said, I kinda figured that while I was typing this question Good feature indeed!

Quick question about trading through the website: What's the point? I mean, my city's not progressing, because I'm not logged on... so I can make a trade, but I won't be receiving money or resources untill I log in. Is it just so I can organise my trades so it's better when I do log on? Or is there something more to it...? (though admittedly, while typing this, my mind went "oh hey but wait, that's actually quite useful...!" >.<) *runs of to trade on the website a bit*

My first city I had no plan at all, so it's a jumble of shapes and zones... I also used the freezone tool a lot. It's now at 1000000+ pop, with some room to grow, but some faults in the layout are beginning to really show themselves now... (lack of traffic planning, polution all over the map etc) The city I'm trying to grow now I've planned more... basically it's grids all the way, HD as soon as available, lots of parks and very little industry pushed in one corner. It's more effective, sure... but it feels less "alive". Up to now I've mainly been focusing on making cities work, i.e. make money and grow, I think in the future I'll try and create different types of cities, with nice designs or features... although I must say that the game seems to push you toward going bigger and bigger....

Originally posted by: mrdazza_460 you are kinder right, the cities government as the final say on where hotels can or cant go, but ultimately the people will decide where thing will go and the government just goes with the larger public opinion, if there is a huge out cry over a certain thing most likely it will not happen, if you have a look around the city you live in you will find hotels all though out your city not just in one particular area, as for being good fore game play don’t think so ether, why because if we are building on the same map ultimately our cities will end up looking the same with only miner differences , because the game is always telling me what to do and where to put thing, and this is one of the major reasons I like creative game, and why I like SC, I also hope the fix retail because for some reason It bugs me a lot Most important point, I think, is that the discussion should be about whether or not something makes for good gameplay, not whether or not it's completely "realistic". your are right we should but in the end of the day we are making something that looks and feels realistic, we are not making a fantasy cities, this is why I cant understand why they chooses so many unrealistic thing in the game and it is probably why there is so much criticism directed MC way. quote> I guess it's down to what you'd consider "realistic"... to me, the cities seem realistic enough. Yes, the "public" could stop certain plans. They can in CXL as well... If I put something in the wrong place, it won't even be built. Basically that's the people telling you "screw you, that's a bad idea" And yes, hotels are all over the city... as they are in my CXL cities as well. Putting them all in one place would make them fail horribly. What you won't see in either my CXL cities or real cities, is a hotel in an area that's meant for housing. I can't buy a plot of land which is assigned as residential and start a business there... Or even buy an existing office building and just live in it.... It's meant to be a business. Yes, the trading system is a somewhat arbitrary system, but it serves a purpose. It "forces" interaction with other players by creating interdependency. And, it allows for "dynamic specialisation", i.e. if everyone on the planet decides to create holiday resorts, holdays become cheap and other resources will be more expensive, making it interesting to create a city without tourism, but with other, less common, resources. It could be better and it needs to be expanded, but it works. However, I see a lot of people complaining about how the game "forces" you to do certain things, limiting the freedom to build the city of your dreams... but the only things the game's forced me to do is not do stupid things. Sure, I can decide that I dream of a city with only High density Elites, High Tech and Tourism... oh and I'll only use small farm roads, because I think that's pretty... this city will fail. Which I think is quite realistic Yes, shipping water halfway around the globe is unrealistic (though you probably shouldn't take it that literally), but what would the alternative be? Only trade water with neighbouring cities? Way to complex and limiting... Not trade water at all? That's simply removing part of the game and dumbing it down... Sure, a system that is more realistic and still works in the game might be found... but is it really such a big deal? Is it worth changing a basically simple trading system that works, just so it's that bit more reallistic? And if it is, then where to draw the line? Is it realistic that you can just demolish whole neighbourhoods? We've had a few incidents of that type here in The Hague in the last decade... it's years of legal procedures, people refusing to move out, etc. etc.... So I propose that "bulldozing" a residential area has a chance to fail, not allowing you to bulldoze it, or it can cost up to 10x the normal price, due to unforeseen legal problems... or it can succeed, but then the company that sets up their gets boycotted and harrassed so it goes bankrupt... Yes, this is an extreme example. But that's the problem with saying things have to be "reallistic"... realism is neither simple nor convenient

1) I understand what you mean, I don't agree though. But that's subjective I guess. To me, the UI for this game is very intuitive, and I was able to grasp all the different screesn, stats and options by the time my first city reached a few hundred K pop, without doing the tutorials... To others it might not be. What surprises me here is that by the sound of it, you are a much more experienced "city builder" then I am, so if anything I would've expected that I would be having problems getting into it, instead of you. But perhaps it is harder for you because you are so used to SC's controls and UI... which would mean that this game isn't actually to hard for the average user, but rather for the non-average user 2) Again, this is very much about personal interpretation and background knowledge. I'm a customer service manager, I "buy" office services on a daily basis. I hire temps for special/last minute tasks, we work with external callcentres for our telemarketing activities, a lot of our data-entry is done by an external company, all our shipping is done by another company, our marketing department hire advertisement agencies, etc. etc. etc. So to me, selling "office services" made perfect sense. Would I have understood this 15 years ago, when I had no work experience apart from some holiday jobs? Well actually I think I would've, but I'm not sure. I think that regardles, I would have seen it as a resource you can apparently trade, who cares how it works but that all depends on how you look at the game I guess. 3) I've not played SC4, so I can't compare. All I can do is judge this game on it's own merits. And so far, I think it's good. It seems that the trading feature really doesn't agree with you... which surprises me because you come across as an intelligent enough person. And it's really not very complex. In "Market Place", you have a row of icons showing all your resources. If you have some spare, or just enough, they're blue, if you're short, they're orange. If you click on one, you get an overview showing you Sell and Buy offers. If you can afford to take an offer, a green button appears next to it. Click it to take that offer. If you don't see an offer you want, you can create one, either Sell or Buy by checking the appropriate box, fill in the number you want to sell or buy, and the amount you want to sell or buy this for... et voila! So what you do is sell anything you have an excess of, and buy what you're short on. And there you go, a trading city!